Having major M4 Fitting problems :P

eponica

Hi again ^_^;

It's a slow day around here, (thankfully) and I am rebuilding Siggy, one of my Studio characters, for future animation use in Carrara. I haven't had many problems using Genesis autofit, and in fact just redid one of my Genesis characters with no real issues... but I can't say the same for the M4 figure. I am using Morphs ++ and M4 Elite Ethnic Faces and I can't seem to get a single clothing item fitted to him decently. This is the Veranil for M4 outfit, but I've tried several others with the same results. It seems Carrara is not taking the morphs into account. Or is it just me? I know Carrara has some autofit bugs...

EDIT: Sorry for rambling. To clarify, my M4 wardrobe isn't fitting my M4 figure. This is not Genesis. :)

Diomede

Unfortunately, I think these types of problems are item specific. I have had my share of poke through, and even far more successes. However, I can't find a pattern for which legacy products work well with genesis and genesis 2 and which do not.

As for Michael 4 specifically, I am attaching a screenshot of three products that were designed for M4 that I have had little to no trouble using with Genesis. They are the ValSlicer from here at Daz, The RP Zoot Suit, and the Uzelite M401 outfit. Yet I have had other products behave similar to what you report.

There is a thread in which we discuss many of these issues. I don't think there is a single best answer, but you might find the following posts of interest.

discusses a poke through issue. My best results seem to come fro using Studio "save as wearable" preset then loading and saving as a Carrara file, and then in future loading directly from within Carrara. That is not the norm for others.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45361/

Dustrider Recommends a Product Called Poke-Away
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45361/#664540

Argus reports the opposite experience (in terms of best results) than mine
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45361/#670683

Mohanda reports yet another set of results
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45361/P30/#684969

I report problems with the products bundled with Carrara, which seems like a very poor marketing choice given how many products I have had great success using with Carrara.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45361/P45/#710558

eponica

Thank you, Diomede :)

Unfortunately, I see that I phrased my question all wrong :P I will change that. The figure I am trying to fit clothes to is M4, using products made for M4. I shouldn't have mentioned Genesis or Autofit in my first post. My brain was evidently still back doing another figure :)

This is specifically an M4 problem ^^; No Genesis figure is involved. Sorry for my fuzzy phrasing. A little too tired, I guess :)

I think I will take a nap now :)

JoeMamma2000

Sorry I can't be of help....but I'll take the opportunity for an editorial comment :)

It's sad that in this day and age (uh oh, here it comes...) there isn't a better clothing solution than this ridiculous conforming clothing nonsense. Carrara, and other similar apps, have a much better solution internally, but it isn't being used. And that solution is collision detection, like what Bullet uses. All they need to do is to integrate that collision detection algorithm with whatever clothing you have to ensure that there is no poke-thru.

Heck, you can already apply the Bullet cloth sim to conforming clothing, something I only recently found out thanks to one of the folks here. All they need to do it make a single solution that automatically does what I call (and have always wanted) a "shrink fit" algorithm to fit the clothes to the character no matter what pose or motion. Most other similar apps have a "shrink fit", even Blender.

Look, the concept of bones is great if used as intended. Which is to hold the "skin" (mesh) of the character to its bones so the character's body moves when you rotate the bones. That's fine. But to shoehorn this conforming clothing idea and have it controlled by bones, and require vendors to spend untold hours making morphs, which are NEVER enough, is ludicrous. It's a nice idea when you have nothing else, but the year is 2015, and we've had collision detection for at least 25 years now.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the day when somebody makes a very efficient and comprehensive plugin or whatever to import Carrara files into Blender. At that point Carrara will be a distant memory for me, and many others.

Sorry....that's my rant for today.... :)

Diomede

Ah, I see. OK, for generation 4 (such as M4) and earlier figures, there is a whole other set of considerations. The default product is designed to fit the default M4. If you morph the M4 using morphs++ or any other set of morphs, the conforming clothing item will only match the morph if it also has the same morph - which depends upon the creator. For example, because the Freak 4 morph would be a common morph for people to want to use, it would be relatively common for clothing creators to include a Freak 4 morph when they distribute. But they don't have to. If both the base figure and the conforming clothing item have the same morph under the same name, Carrara will match the morphs when you conform the clothing item. Otherwise, it will not.

So, the bad news is that there is no automatic program deformer for generation 4 and earlier figures and content. The good news is that the mesh of the underlying models is not protected, which means that you have several good options for directly adjusting the clothing mesh to match your figure. It is not difficult to address an issue of M4 cloth to M4 figure. If it makes you feel any better, there are still a great many Carrara-ists who refuse to use genesis or genesis2 in part because using the generation 4 figures had become such a well-constructed workflow.

However, I don't have a handy link right at the moment so hopefully someone will come along soon. If not, I will hunt one down later.

eponica

I'm back from my nap! Hi again, Joe and Diomede :)

First of all, thank you, Diomede, for your clear explanation of the M4 clothing issue. If the clothing requires its own morphs then apparently this would also be a problem in DS? Sorry I'm so ignorant of the basics, but I usually use Genesis. However, I really want to use the M4 Ethnic Faces with this particular character.

A link to a tutorial on how to manually adjust M4 clothing in Carrara would be greatly appreciated! I wonder if there might be a chapter on this in the Infinite Skills Carrara 8.5, as I do have that tutorial set? I will have to check.

As to your software observations, Joe, I have Blender, but I have not really gotten into it. The interface is just so intimidating to me. My movie-making cousin Anton, on the other hand, is a major Blender addict! :)

If there is a shrink-to-fit clothing option in Blender and other 3d software, I would think that DAZ would want to add something like that to Carrara. The more I use Carrara, the more I love it, but I am also surprised at its more obvious pitfalls. If there was a single thing I would appreciate being added, it would be a library search function like in DS. Still, shrink-to-fit clothing would be a very close second. Collision, push and smoothing (for clothes, like in DS) would also be Wonderful :)

JoeMamma2000

Okay, a little more rant and then I'm done... :)

And what is really strange is this: you KNOW that DAZ spent many many manhours on Autofit algorithms, etc., to make conforming clothing fit better in some cases.

So why didn't they use that time to, instead, develop a collision-based solution that does away with all the poke-thru once and for all? And frees everyone, including vendors, from having to develop zillions of morphs for their conforming clothing?

I don't get it....

Mistara

did you inject the morphs into the shirt?

some of the clothes, the morphs need to be inj with a pz2 file.

other options, the 'morphing clothes' app by d3d can transfer morphs from m4 to the clothes

i been hit or miss troubles with aiko3 and her clothes. needs examination :)

Roygee

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to the day when somebody makes a very efficient and comprehensive plugin or whatever to import Carrara files into Blender. At that point Carrara will be a distant memory for me, and many others.

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjteleblender-for-ds1-2-3-4 - not Carrara to Blender, but D/S to Blender. Works really well, optimised for Cycles, but you have to make your own armature if you want to animate.

He also has a Carrara to Blender plugin, but it out of date ( for Blender 2.69 IIRC) and I don't think there is any intention of updating.

Diomede

I'll try to show how it is supposed to work, then I'll show one way to address it in a second post.

Well, here is how it might work if the clothing creator has put the appropriate morphs in the item. Sometimes, you will find morph injections in the pose folders. Under the "content" tab in the browser, open the My DAZ3D Library Runtime folder (emphasis on the word "Runtime" ). There should be subfolders labeled Faces, Figures, Hair, Hands, Poses, and Pops. In the "poses" subfolder, check to see if the clothing item that you are using has its own folder. If so, check to see if the folder contains any "inj" poses. If so, click and drag the "inj" file on to the clothing item in the instances tab (lower right) and it will load the morphs. I doubt that such files exist for your product, but sometimes they do and you should check before going to a lot of other trouble.

Assuming that no morph injection files exist, lets carry on.

First, here is how it would work if the clothing had the morphs (either built in, or available as "inj" poses).
- load the base figure (M4 in this case with its morphs) in your scene.
- load the clothing item in your scene. If sold by Daz, sometimes clothing items for M4 and V4 will have "unimesh" in the name if they have the morphs.
- With the clothing selected, under the general tab, and then under animation group, choose "fit to" and choose M4.
- The clothing will conform to the figure.
** in the attached pics, I loaded M4 and a clothing item that I know has some morphs, the H4 bodysuit. If you look in the screen grabs, you will see that a bunch of morphs will appear in the upper right when the item is selected. I have put "build" in the search box so that you can see similar morphs (bodybuilder) in both lists.
- Select the base figure (M4 in this case) and increase the morph dial by entering a number or using the arrows.
** in the attached pic, I increased bodybuilder morph for M4
- The clothing item also morphs to conform to the base figure
** in the attached pic, note how M4 increases in muscle girth, and the bodysuit does as well.

OK, your clothing product is not doing that, so in a later post I will show one thing that can be done.

Diomede

Well, there were several replies while I was typing. What MistyWhisky is referring to is the "inj" files I mentioned that are sometimes in the "pose" folder in My Daz3D Library Runtime. Again, check to see if you have any for the product.

JoeMamma2000

Roygee said:

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to the day when somebody makes a very efficient and comprehensive plugin or whatever to import Carrara files into Blender. At that point Carrara will be a distant memory for me, and many others.

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjteleblender-for-ds1-2-3-4 - not Carrara to Blender, but D/S to Blender. Works really well, optimised for Cycles, but you have to make your own armature if you want to animate.

He also has a Carrara to Blender plugin, but it out of date ( for Blender 2.69 IIRC) and I don't think there is any intention of updating.

Yeah, thanks...that's been around for a while. Last I recall you couldn't bring a rigged character into Blender from D|S, just obj's and stuff correct? That kind of ruins it for me. I guess there's no conversion between DAZ bones and Blender bones....

Mistara

does CA read the morphs in poser .pmd files?

Roygee

You are correct, Joe - at least far as i know. Blender's rigging and weight-painting is so simple and easy that it is no huge problem.

Diomede

Well, I actually had a hard time finding some M4 stuff that I owned that didn't have the basic morphs. So I will show one very easy way to address this (an inelegant way) for generation 4 and earlier content in Carrara. I am going to use a Michael 3 example because I gave up looking for M4 clothing without the morphs.

** this is just one way, and it is NOT necessarily the best way **

OK, I loaded Daz Michael 3 and applied morphs to it.
- I this case, I made Michael 3 fat by using a morph called heavy.
- I then loaded an M3 pirate shirt that did not have that morph.
- I conformed (fit to) the shirt to M3 and you can see that the shirt is too small now.
- I then selected the "model" level of the shirt in the instances tray (lower right).
- I then clicked the wrench icon in the top left menu in order to start modeling in the Assemle room
- The shirt appears to change to a bunch of polygons.
- I then used Carrara's modeling tools to select the lower portion of the shirt (which was hard to see but easy to select :> ).
- Making sure that the box for "soft select" was enabled, I moved the shirt's polygons outward until it better fit M3.
- I then clicked the wrench icon again to finish editing
- I then posed M3 and the shirt still fits.

Hooray! In Carrara, you can directly adjust the meshes of the clothes in the assembly room! For M4, V4, etc., this is very easy and painless. Unfortunately, Daz has chosen to protect the topology of genesis-related content. Aaargh.

eponica

Oh, wow, that is Very informative! Thank You for taking the time and effort to explain! :)

I do see now that I have a "unimesh fits" for the Veranil outfit. Maybe there really Are some morphs in there, I will check now, thanks again everyone for your help! :)

eponica

Diomede, your instructions worked perfectly! :-)

I injected all the morphs I could find for the outfit, but none worked for my figure. So I used the vertex modeler as you said, and it really Was painless! In a couple of minutes I had a perfectly fitting shirt!

You know, I really like being able to tweak clothes like this. Right away, this makes me feel a lot more comfortable than just depending on a fitting tool. But I guess this won't work with Genesis stuff, correct?